


In Bloom

by Emmar



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-22 23:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmar/pseuds/Emmar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura does what's necessary on both a personal and professional level, and makes her first kill her most important.</p><p>(Both warnings occur in the very first paragraph.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrionPax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionPax/gifts).



> I wanted to write something where Sakura grows a backbone and some self-respect and realises that Sasuke doesn't even _want_ to be saved, and that both she and Naruto deserve better. I don't know if this would actually fit into the canon timeline and I also don't really care, so. ~~This may or may not be expanded, but I'll mark it complete because I think it stands alone well enough for now.~~ I wrote more stuff.

Haruno Sakura is not the idealist her teammate is.

Oh, how she wishes she were; she _wants_ to believe in Sasuke, wants to believe so badly it hurts, but he has never had a kind word for her and even his rivalry with Naruto can barely be called that, always more bite than bark.

She has never been worthy of Uchiha Sasuke’s notice, she realises.

And that, his utter disregard for anyone he believes lesser than himself, is what lets her drive a kunai between his third and fourth vertebrae as a thousand birds chirp between his fingers.

“Sakura?” Naruto manages, voice thin, as the point of the kunai exits the front of Sasuke’s throat.  
“I’m sorry that this isn’t what you wanted, Naruto,” she says, tears a cold trail on her face but her voice the most level it’s ever been, “but I’m not sorry I did it.”

\---

There is no trial, though at the time of his death Uchiha Sasuke is still a shinobi of Konoha. There are hundreds of words she could throw in Tsunade’s face, about letting Naruto’s sentimentality cloud her judgement as Hokage, but she keeps them behind her teeth and endures the lecture and the heavy gazes of the Clan Council. Still, they can’t complain overmuch - she _did_ preserve his body in a storage scroll and return it to the village, so it’s not as though they can’t restore the Uchiha clan _that_ way.

Naruto’s refusal to spend any longer in her presence than absolutely necessary stings, though.

Team Seven fractures under the pressure, and three weeks after their return from the Valley of the End, Kakashi files for its official dissolution.

He delivers the notice personally, and of all things _that_ is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She takes the scroll and stares down at it, mind blank, and then bursts into tears, noisy and messy, and Kakashi takes a step back. She snorts a watery laugh, then, because of _course_ her jounin-sensei finds weepy thirteen-year-old girls scarier than missing-nin.

And that’s the thing: She’s a thirteen-year-old girl who three and a half weeks ago killed a boy she’d once planned to marry. Kunoichi of the year or not, no academy lesson could have prepared her for that.

When she quiets down, curls up on the couch and props her chin on her knee, still sniffling, Kakashi takes a step closer and puts a hand on her shoulder very, very gently.

“It’s probably not what you want to hear right now, but I’m proud of you,” he says awkwardly, and perches on the edge of the couch beside her. “Uh, can I help?”

She shakes her head, trying to think of something he could actually do, and then mumbles into her knees, “I could really use a hug.”

A warm arm drapes itself across her shoulders a moment later, and then there’s a puff of smoke and about a dozen dogs, all wearing Konoha hitai-ite and henohenomoheji on them somewhere.

Sakura’s mother arrives home in the early hours to find her daughter curled up on the couch with Hatake Kakashi and a dozen ninken, and thinks it’s the least troubled sleep Sakura has had in weeks.

\---

“Sensei--”  
“You know, Sakura, I’m not actually your sensei anymore.”  
“I was _thinking_ ,” she bulls on, “that you could take me as your apprentice.”  
“Um,” says Kakashi, one visible eyebrow making a bid for his hairline.  
“When you have free time, of course.”  
“You’re not being put on another team?”  
“I formally requested a solo posting. I’ll be village-bound until I make chuunin.”  
“I may not be available all that often,” he says, and she smiles politely and says nothing about the dog-masked ANBU who stands guard at her home so often, whose posture is nothing like Kakashi’s but whose presence is unmistakable.

Kakashi isn’t available to train her often, it’s true, but she’s happy to be passed around amongst the other jounin-sensei of her generation. Kurenai’s gentle hand sculpts her genjutsu skill until she can cloak herself with barely a thought. Gai’s bright, effusive tutelage breaks down the poor taijutsu practitioner in her and rebuilds it from the foundations up, until she feels as though she could walk around the walls of the village on her hands a hundred times. Asuma makes her play shogi until she wants to stab him in the eye with her king, and then sets her against Shikamaru, too.

But Kakashi is the one who makes her tie all these disparate practices together, who sends her trawling through training grounds looking for him, sets traps and makes her fend for herself. It is Kakashi who presents her with a scroll on basic fuinjutsu for her fourteenth birthday, with an entirely false wide-eyed exclamation that he’d had _no idea_ that it was her birthday, and that was just an old rag, anyway, but he supposed she could keep it if she wanted.

Naruto hasn’t talked to her for eleven weeks, and she’s not even sure it still hurts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the subject of Kakashi and Sakura's relationship: Whilst I do not think a thirteen-year age gap is insurmountable - especially not in a society where the life expectancy isn't much above thirty-five and ninja should grab every moment of companionship they can - in this fic Sakura is _fourteen_ , regardless of weird in-universe stances on genin technically being legally adults. Her relationship with Kakashi is strictly platonic, somewhere between teacher and... older brother or young uncle. (Additionally, I headcanon him as an aromantic asexual.)

Naruto leaves on a training trip, and Sakura is… happy for him, in a hollow sort of way.

“The great Toad Sage Jiraiya, huh?”  
“Mm,” says Kakashi, flipping through Icha Icha Tactics as she painstakingly copies out seals.  
“My experiences with the other two Legendary Sannin haven’t been great,” she admits, with a thin smile. “Probably better not to test my luck with the third.”  
“Probably,” he agrees. “But you want to go see him off anyway, don’t you?”  
“Mm. But he doesn’t want to see me.”  
“Not everything is about Uzumaki Naruto, you know.”  
“No, but this is, so I’ll let him have it.”

Kakashi just hums, neither affirmative nor negative.

\---

Sakura’s time consists of only three activities, after Naruto’s departure: She trains, she sleeps, and she does D-ranks.

She does a _lot_ of D-ranks. She does the work of three genin alone and takes home three genin’s work’s worth of money. She weeds gardens and walks dogs and builds walls, and it’s strangely peaceful. None of it is work she has to really think about, so it lets her mind wander to more important things, like whatever seal she’s working to perfect this week or the taijutsu stance Gai-sensei has her working on, and her body works on auto-pilot.

Which works until the D-rank she’s handed is delivery work for the Yamanaka Flower Shop.

Please, she thinks, let it be Inoichi-san working today.

Luck has never been on Sakura’s side.

“I cannot _believe_ you!” Ino’s voice rings out, strident and sharp. Sakura braces herself to lose her oldest friend and is surprised when Ino’s hands clamp down on her shoulders and shake her, and then pull her into a hug. Ino is trembling. “He could have killed you, Forehead! I thought you were supposed to be the smart one on that team! I swear, if you ever do something that stupid again I’ll kill you myself, got it?”

“Sorry, Ino,” she mumbles into her best friend’s shoulder, and Ino’s arms tighten around her waist.  
“Don’t be,” Ino commands, pulling away. “Just don’t do it again. Besides, you didn’t _really_ think I was going to let a _boy_ get between us again, did you?”  
“No,” Sakura admits, but knowing in her head that Ino would understand wasn’t the same as knowing in her heart.

“You know, we put in this mission request expecting a full genin team,” Ino says, turning to pick up a crate full of bouquets. “You sure you can manage these by yourself, Forehead?”  
“I’m a _lot_ faster than most genin, Ino-pig. I’ll be fine.”  
“Here you go, then.”

When she brings the crates back, Ino tucks a daffodil behind her ear. “Don’t be a stranger, Sakura.”

\---

Sakura’s mother corners her after dinner that evening, while she has three fuinjutsu scrolls laid out on the table, brush poised above her inkstone.

“Sakura,” says her mother. “I want to talk to you about Hatake Kakashi.”  
“Mama?” says Sakura, laying her brush down and blinking up at her mother.  
“I’ve come home three nights this week to find you asleep on him on this very couch. He doesn’t even use honorifics when he talks to you!”

“Mama!” Sakura splutters, face a flaming red that she knows clashes terribly with her hair. “I-- We-- It’s not like that! Kakashi is just--”  
“And there you go, dropping the honorifics, too!”  
“He’s my sensei!” she protests, clapping her hands against her cheeks as if that will cool them. It would be great if the couch opened up and swallowed her up right now, honestly. “And he-- Mama, he _understands_. I know you don’t like talking about what I do as a shinobi, but you can’t have not heard about what I did.”  
“You killed a traitor to the village,” says her mother, looking nonplussed.  
“I killed my teammate, Mama. I killed him and my other teammate refused to talk to me for months and now he’s left the village and Kakashi was the only person who understood! And he’s no good with people, Mama, but for me he tries. And it’s-- nice,” she admits, quietly, staring at the gap between her feet. “It’s nice to know that once we’re done training, there’s at least one person who doesn’t expect anything from me. But that’s all.”

“Hmm,” says her mother. “Alright. But tell him to come in by the door, next time; I don’t want to have to repaint the windowsill every time he drops by.”

\---

In Naruto’s absence, the rest of the Rookie Nine grow closer, and of all of them, Kiba is the one who best understands what she did and why.

“He was rabid,” says the Inuzuka, with a shrug, as Sakura scratches behind Akamaru’s ears. “What you did was best for everyone.”

“For once, Kiba sounds as though he actually knows what he’s talking about,” says Shino mildly, from across the little circle they’ve made. Kiba scowls at him but says nothing, and Hinata hides an awkward smile in her collar.

“It had to happen eventually,” murmurs Shikamaru, flat on his back staring at the clouds, head pillowed on his chuunin vest.  
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” says Ino, tone carefully blank, but Sakura knows that spark in her friend’s eye.  
“He always acted like he was so much better than us,” says Chouji, in between mouthfuls of potato chips. “The Uchiha weren’t even the biggest clan in Konoha.”

And then the discussion devolves into Clan Politics Talk, and Sakura is reminded that of all the Rookie Nine, she is the only one from a civilian family - even Naruto, orphaned and despised, has family history to be found somewhere, if he only went looking. But she doesn’t mind; it’s the sort of gossip it’s nice to listen to specifically _because_ it doesn’t affect her and probably never will.

She leans back on her elbows and looks up at the clouds, and beside her Shikamaru mutters, “Asuma-sensei wanted to know if you were up for a game of shogi next thursday.”  
“Sure,” she says. “You, too, if it wouldn’t be too… troublesome.”  
“Maybe.”


End file.
